The NFL’s first exclusive regular season game on YouTube is just over a month away. And while the streamer has landed Hall of Famer Kurt Warner as its lead analyst, it still doesn’t have a play-by-play voice.
That’s according to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, who reports Warner will call the traditional broadcast of the Sept. 5 Chargers-Chiefs matchup from São Paulo, Brazil. The game will stream globally for free on YouTube and marks the NFL’s second regular season game in South America, as well as YouTube’s first attempt at producing a live game on its own platform.
NEWS: Kurt Warner will be the game analyst on YouTube’s Chiefs-Chargers game, while the streamer still searches for a play-by-player with a little more than a month until the game, The Athletic has learned.https://t.co/73hZewjXKS
— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) July 29, 2025
Sort of.
YouTube doesn’t actually have the infrastructure to produce a game broadcast the way Fox, ESPN, or Amazon would. So, just like Netflix did with its Christmas Day experiment last season, YouTube is paying NBC to handle the production. And much like Netflix, it’s not borrowing NBC’s on-air talent.
Warner is the first piece. He’s no stranger to national games, already serving as Westwood One’s lead radio analyst for Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl, and working about a half-dozen games per season for NFL Network. Now he’ll be the face (and voice) of YouTube’s big debut.
But the bigger question is who’s sitting next to him.
Marchand notes that YouTube has encountered difficulties finding a play-by-play announcer due to the timing. The Friday night game falls in a packed opening weekend, as Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday are all loaded with NFL and college football broadcasts. Most network-level voices are already committed. And with some networks hesitant to help the streamers, YouTube is largely on its own.
There are logical options. Noah Eagle would make sense, especially with NBC producing the game, but he’s already set to call Michigan State–Boston College for NBC’s Big Ten Saturday Night. That likely takes him out of the running, unless something changes.
Beyond that, YouTube is expected to lean into what it does best. According to Marchand, the platform will likely roll out “watch-along” style alternative streams, with top YouTube creators offering commentary, reactions, and whatever version of football insight their audiences expect. But the traditional broadcast — the one most viewers will watch — still needs a professional voice to lead it.
Kurt Warner is in. The clock’s ticking to find who joins him.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.